Synopsis
Documents the 1862 trial and execution of Nathaniel Gordon, the only man in the history of the United States to be hanged for slave trading, in an account that sets the trial against a backdrop of the Civil War under newly elected president Lincoln and offers insight into why slave trading, although illegal, was previously overlooked. 25,000 first printing.
Reviews
Entering the dense fray of Civil War-themed books is this fast-paced story of the 1862 hanging of Nathaniel Gordon, one of many ship captains charged with breaking an 1820 law banning slave-trading, but the only one to ever be executed. Soodalter, a former museum curator and history teacher, uses this singular event as a prism to provide an overview of Civil War-era politics, Lincoln's presidency and the maritime economy of slavery. Informative, but never dull or pedantic, this book hums along quickly, glossing over well-documented areas and concentrating instead on Gordon, the son of a sea merchant, who was arrested at the helm of a ship containing 897 slaves near the mouth of the Congo River. Deported to New York to stand trial, Gordon found himself at the center of a sensationalist frenzy, caught between the gears of a nation in flux. Soodalter's vivid depictions of slaving voyages present the squalid conditions aboard slaving ships and New York City's infamous "Tombs" prison where Gordon awaited his execution and the attitude among slavers and politicians that anti-slavery legislation was largely a paper tiger. Soodalter's take on slave-trading and its ancillary politics is accessible, and though he retreads some heavily covered material, his survey of slaving vis-à-vis the Gordon case will appeal to casual and serious readers of history.
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*Starred Review* Beginning in 1794, Congress passed a series of increasingly restrictive laws to limit and eventually abolish maritime-based slave trading; by 1820 it had become a capital offense. But, as Soodalter illustrates, the laws were a joke. The U.S. refused to cooperate with Britain in patrolling the African coast. Indifferent or corrupt American officials, both in the U.S. And in foreign ports, repeatedly looked the other way as slavers outfitted ships, sailed to Africa, and returned with their holds stuffed with their cargoes of hapless, suffering humans. Those few officials who took seriously their legal obligations were frustrated by bureaucratic inertia or the outright hostility of pro-slavery figures. However, with the onset of the Civil War, the political atmosphere and the degree of tolerance for slave trading had changed in the Union. When Nathanial Gordon, then a 34-year-old "family man" from Portland, Maine, was seized with a slave-loaded ship on his return from the Congo, it began a complicated, prolonged legal and political struggle that ended with Gordon's execution in 1862. Soodalter's fascinating and disturbing account of this obscure episode in our history is a story replete with political intrigue, cynical opportunism, and, of course, immense tragedy, revealing just how thoroughly the curse of the "peculiar institution" of chattel slavery had infiltrated every aspect of American life. This outstanding work will interest both specialists and general readers. Jay Freeman
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